Conventionally, a specimen processing system, including a plurality of specimen processing devices such as a specimen analyzer and a smear producing device, and a conveyance device for conveying specimens to supply to the specimen processing device, for conveying specimens to each specimen processing device by the conveyance device, and processing the conveyed specimens with the specimen processing device is known.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 10-282114 describes an automatic analyzer in which a main conveyance line for conveying specimen racks is arranged between a rack supplying section and a rack accommodating section and a plurality of analyzing units are arranged along the main conveyance line. In the automatic analyzer described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 10-282114, the specimen rack containing the specimen is placed on the main conveyance line from a sending port of the rack supplying section and conveyed towards the adapted analyzing unit by the conveying operation of the main conveyance line. A dispensing area is provided in correspondence to each analyzing unit, wherein the specimen on the specimen rack is dispensed to a reaction section of the analyzing unit in such dispense process area. The dispense processing area includes a reception port for receiving the specimen rack from the main conveyance line and a sending port for sending the specimen rack to the main conveyance line. Each conveyance path is defined by a combination of one of a plurality of sending ports and one of a plurality of reception port, so that a plurality of conveyance paths is formed as a whole. A control device for controlling the conveyance of the specimen rack selects the conveyance path adapted to the specimen rack positioned on one of the sending ports from a plurality of conveyance paths, and conveys the specimen rack towards the reception port of the selected conveyance path through the main conveyance line. Such conveyance is executed without the other specimen racks on the main conveyance line, wherein the specimen rack inserted the earliest is conveyed first if the specimen rack waiting to be conveyed is in plurals. The conveyance is also executed after checked that the reception port, which is the reception destination, can receive the specimen rack.
In such specimen processing system, the measurement unit cannot perform the measurement if the expiration date or the validity date of a reagent used for the measurement has expired or there is no reagent remaining. However, in the automatic analyzer described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 10-282114, the reagent cannot be efficiently used because the specimen rack is conveyed irrespective of the state of the reagent of each analyzing unit.